with 2): For the very reason you mentioned: I want an exact reproduction, in terms of silences and even hiss (it can add that special flavor, think old jazz records). Silence is encoded at 32 kbps, in MPC even lower, so there's no problem.

with 3): You obviously strive to boost the volume as much as possible (without clipping), however, the perceived loudness doesn't depend on the peak volume (compare dynamically compressed music with classical music). While peak normalizing usually adds some 3 dB noise, the loudness gain is maybe <1 dB with today's music productions. And don't forget that the music has already been peak-normalized in the studio.

Don't get me wrong, your goal is honorable. It's sometimes a good idea to lower the volume *before* encoding, because too loud music can indeed cause problems occasionally. But i would do this with WaveGain. It doesn't draw it's conclusions just from the peak values. If you use it right, it's better than normalizing. Try these switches: "--album --log --gain 3 --dither 3 --apply". With --gain, you can raise the reference volume, if it is too quiet for you. Dithering is also a good idea, it pushes the noise to the HF region, where it doesn't interfere. And of course, AlbumGain, to preserve the volume differences (again, the "exact reproduction" thing).

with 5): Why do you always want to increase volume? Many playback systems start to have problems at -3 dB below FS already. The reference volume in ReplayGain was introduced to have a safe, uniform volume level across the board. You put this ad absurdum. But i'm sure, one day you'll discover the great benefit of ReplayGain...